Clarence Thomas’s Billionaire Benefactor Collects Hitler Art

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Whistleblower reveals MASSIVE SCANDAL of Chief Supreme Court Justice
by Michael Popok
MeidasTouch
May 1, 2023 Legal AF Podcast - Full Episodes

Michael Popok of Legal AF reports on the brewing ethical scandals on the US Supreme Court embroiling right wing Justices Gorsuch, Thomas, Alito, Kavanaugh, and Roberts, as the Chief Justice thumbs his nose at the Senate Judiciary and issues a watered down “ethical statement “ that most of them have already violated.



Transcript

This is Michael Popok legal AF it's time to dive in to the right wing of the U.S. Supreme Court and determine whether through transparency we have an ethical corruption problem on the court primarily by the right wing or are they just playing by the old rules that everybody played by and there's nothing to see here I think it's the former I think we have an ethical problem that light has now been shined on since the Clarence Thomas Revelations but now in broil at least five of the others on the right wing of the Court let's start with Clarence Thomas and how we got here the revelations that Clarence Thomas and his wife have accepted millions of dollars of free luxurious vacations around the world on the back of a person on the right wing who has regular business before the court and that's the key every time I'm talking about something during this hot take I'm going to talk about the fact that it links to an entity a lawyer a professor a party who has regular business before the court and that's the problem and that's the ethical corruption issue so with Clarence Thomas Harlan Crowe Real Estate Mogul far right wing entertains Jenny and Clarence Thomas on yachts jumbo Jets and at Resorts of his around the world has been doing it for over a dozen years and that's not all he also took off of Clarence Thomas's hands his family Homestead and the hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars in that transaction as if Harlan Crowe couldn't buy any other house but the one that belongs to Clarence Thomas Harlan Crowe and the entities that he uh has either founded or provided fundraising dollars to in the tens of millions of dollars have regular business in front of the court and Thomas does not recuse himself or disqualify himself from listening to these hearings and that is the problem then you turn to Chief Justice Roberts chief justice Roberts has a wife that has her own career that's nothing wrong with that and in the last five years she's averaged about two million dollars a year working for a major legal recruiter headhunting firm that places lawyers and groups of lawyers at law firms the problem is many of the lawyers and groups that she has placed are at law firms who regularly have business in front of the U.S Supreme Court regularly and there's a reason she is placing obviously these people at these certain firms because it's a gateway to her husband right so we have that then we have Neil Gorsuch, Neil Gorsuch who's also on the right wing he has a cabin in the woods that nobody apparently wants except he sells it to the head of Greenberg Traurig a major Farm based in Miami that regularly conducts business in front of the court and again Gorsuch does not recuse himself but he had no problem with a million dollar transaction with the head of Greenberg trial rig of all the cabins in the remote part of Colorado the Greenberg guy how to buy the one belonging to the one of the Supreme Court justices in in which his firm regularly appears come on and then you have Alito who's got his own ethical dilemmas because it was revealed by Reverend Rob shank several months ago that Alito regularly attended dinners with the founder of Hobby Lobby the right-wing fundamentalist Christian conservative entity and at a dinner in 2014 he talked about a decision he was writing Alito that was against contraception rights and chose religious qualities above the right of a woman to choose and that was in 2014 and that was revealed according to Reverend shank at a dinner hosted by a hosted by The Hobby Lobby people attended by Alito and then you've got Kavanaugh and Gorsuch and Thomas the new reporting for the New York Times today is who are regularly showered with gifts and other luxury items and other perks by being visiting faculty at George Mason University's Scalia law school named after the right wing former Justice who died Antonin Scalia but they are whined and dine Kavanaugh, Gorsuch and Thomas regularly they are even sent to far away places and they're allowed to choose the Exotic locales that they want to teach courses in in Italy in Iceland in in London and it's all expenses paid for them and their families and then there's faculty members at George Mason who regularly at that law school Scalia law school who regularly submit Friend of the Court briefs we call him amicus briefs amicus briefs to do business in front of the court in which their co-professor the Supreme Court justice was just their buddy for the summer so 25 of the amicus briefs that are submitted by Scalia law professors are from people who worked side by side co-teaching classes with Gorsuch ,Kavanaugh and Thomas I I mean again business before the court if you're doing business before the court you would think that the justices would stay away from entanglements and appearances of impropriety that make it appear like their current they're being favors be encurried with them to change a result I mean Scalia University Scalia law school who nobody ever heard of 30 years ago 25 years ago and was founded just in the 20 2015s or so has rocketed up the charts from almost uh 50 top 50 ranking to now it's pushing top 30 ranking and they want to have this close relationship with the right-wing justices now look other justices for the Supreme Court have also guest lectured at Scalia law school um Kagan has done it Sotomayor has done it the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg who was very close to Scalia has also but this incestuous closeness between the far right wing of the court and Scalia law particularly which is basically run by the Federalist Society by Leonard Leo formerly a federalist Society executive who donated 30 million dollars in honor of Anthony Scalia the Koch family who donated uh 10 million dollars to the school and then a 1.6 billion with a B billion dollar donation that was made to uh Leonard Leo's Foundation by a little-known uh electronics Mogul in the midwest who used to own a company called trip light t-r-i-p-p-l-i-t-e and who donated 100 of the shares of trip light to a Leonard Leo for him to go out and do all of his uh campaigning against woke principles critical race Theory and then try to reshape the Judiciary spending now UPS upwards of two billion dollars in order to accomplish that task and what are the funnels for the money is the Scalia Law Center at George Mason with these three law uh Supreme Court Justices sitting there with again business being being performed in front of them well why isn't this a violation of Ethics rules you might be asking because the Supreme Court since time immemorial is not subject and has refused to be subject to the canons of judicial ethics that apply to every other federal and state judge every federal and state judge in America is subject to the Cannons of judicial conducted ethics except the U.S Supreme Court they claim well we're just a co-equal branch of government we have our own article in the U.S Constitution and it wouldn't be right for Congress to pass any type of Regulation against us um we'll do it ourselves we'll self-police but how's that going I just outlined at least four or five potential corruption scandals that were all discovered by investigative journalism and and whistleblowers how's that going Justice Roberts and if we're all looking at Justice Roberts he just gave the middle finger and thumbed his nose at the Senate Judiciary Committee led by Dick Durbin who asked for him to come in to talk about why aren't you imposing an ethical set of cannons an ethical Canon on your court you have a court that's running rampant at least to the public perception rampantly unethical and what are you doing about it come talk to us about it and instead of Chief Justice Roberts took the time to respond by telling Durbin we're not I'm not doing that there's only been two other Chief justices that have come before the senate or the house and it was under very different circumstances and I'm not coming before you because of separation of powers but don't worry we're very ethical because we have just signed on all nine justices to a letter which I'm attaching Senator Durbin that you can read and I'm going to read you parts of this and that letter is a statement on ethics professionalism and practices that the U.S. Supreme Court Justices claim that they follow well you've just heard me in this hot take run through all of the areas where people who have business in front of the court have openly tried to Lobby solicit and curry favor with individual Supreme Court justices in various ways paying Headhunter fees and revenue to a wife of a Supreme Court Justice buying real estate and property from taking it off the hands of a Supreme Court Justice where nobody else apparently wanted it um lavishing them with gifts helping them in Gorsuch's case helping him find housing when he moved to Washington when he became a Supreme Court Justice sending clerks for low cost or almost no cost off of the Scalia law school for instance go work for Gorsuch to show how close an incestuous that relationship is traveling and vacationing all expenses paid on luxurious on luxurious trips for years with somebody who is a right-wing Federalist trying to reshape the court and change policy at the court we've talked about all that so how does uh Roberts handle that well here's you be the judge of it here is I'm going to read for you now from his letter which he claims Justice Roberts claims solves the problem right solves for the equation here's what he says the justices like other federal judges consult a wide variety of Authorities on specific ethical issues they may turn to judicial opinions and treatises and scholarly articles and the historical practice of the court and they may take advice from the Court's legal office and from their colleagues in the note note that the Grabber here he doesn't say they do he says they can he doesn't say in any of the circumstances I just outlined that they're going to he then said that the in 1922 Congress instituted the judicial Conference of the United States to manage the lower federal courts and it binds the lower courts below the Supreme Court nevertheless the conference has contributed to the development of a body of ethical rules and practices which are of significant importance to the justices oh isn't that nice so you know that your brethren below are being ethically managed by Congress and you think that's adorable that's a significant importance to you but you don't say how you how you use it in your daily life how you live the gospel in your daily life um and so it goes on uh it says that the canons of Ethics that are applicable not to the Supreme Court justice but other justices are broadly worded principles that inform ethical practice but they are not themselves rules they are far too General to be used in that manner still the canons as a whole give guidance to the federal Judiciary okay now let's keep going they also went on that the like the lower court judges justices at the Supreme Court in engage in extrajudicial activities which include speaking writing lecturing on both Law related and non-legal subjects the law cannons the court cannons encourage public engagement by judicial officers to avoid isolation Okay now it goes on to say that a Justice of the Supreme Court should consider whether doing any of these things working for a law firm working for a law school vacationing with right-wing people having regular dinner meetings with people on the far right selling property to them and and earning a profit in return they should consider whether any of these things would be considered by an unbiased and reasonable person to be improper an appearance of impropriety okay I'm reasonable I'm unbiased I think it's all shows that an appearance of impropriety the way we've described it especially here on the hot Take and then goes on to say that no such appearance will be created when a justice speaks before a group educational institution a bar group or a not-for-profit that does not regularly does not regularly Lobby or Advocate issues that may be implicated in cases that come before the court I've just described to you at least six examples that are obviously Justice Roberts has buried his head in the sand it doesn't want to acknowledge in which entities and people who regularly have business in front of the court are getting into bed with members of the job of the Supreme Court in various ways financial entanglements and otherwise to Lobby them and if they don't realize that they're being lobbied if they don't realize that their that favor is being curried by spending hundreds of thousands and millions of dollars towards them then their judgment is seriously in doubt and they should be they should be removed from the they should be impeached and removed from the U.S. Supreme Court so that's where we are right now we've got multiple examples and they're almost always on the right it's not because I've edited out on this hot take I don't want to tell you about examples where Sonia Sotomayor or Breyer when he was on the court or or um or a Kagan or Katanji Brown Jackson or any of them did something bad that's similar we don't have this kind of equivalency there's no symmetry it's asymmetrical the right wing do things until they are told they can't and they have as their protector chief justice Roberts who Do's never seen an ethical conflict that he hasn't explained away with a wave of his hand and a paragraph in a self-serving letter patronizing letter sent back to the Senate Judiciary Committee that's where we are we'll follow all of these stories whether it involves Thomas Gorsuch Alito, Cavanaugh, Roberts on hot takes just like this one that I do on the Midas touch Network and I assure you that if one of the other justices from the more moderate wing the Katanji brown Jacksons the Elena Kagans the Sonia Sotomayors if it if it's discovered that they did something wrong I'll be right back here in a hot day and I'll tell you all about it but I got nothing to say as of right now.

[admin]

Republican billionaire & Clarence Thomas's bestie Harlan Crow says he WON'T provide info to Senate
by Glenn Kirschner
May 14, 2023 #TeamJustice

ProPublica recently revealed that Republican billionaire Harlan Crow lavished extravagant trips and accommodations on Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Then it was revealed that Crow also bought Thomas's mother's house and let her live there rent free. But wait, there's more - Crow reportedly payed private school tuition for a grandnephew Thomas was raising as a son.

Not surprisingly, the Senate Judiciary Committee and the Senate Finance Committee demanded Crow provide information about the lavish gifts, benefits and payments to Thomas and his family, in an effort to investigate what kind of legislative fixes need to be enacted to address what appears to be rampant influence peddling and purchasing.

Crow just told the Senate Finance Committee that he will NOT be providing the requested evidence. And wait until you hear the reasons Crow gave for why he was refusing to cooperate with the Senate.



Transcript

so friends a republican billionaire Mega
donor who has been lavishing extravagant
expensive gifts and benefits on Supreme
Court Justice Clarence Thomas just told
the senate committee
no I won't be providing you information
about any of that
about what is essentially his Supreme
Court influence operation
let's talk about that
because Justice matters
[Music]
[Music]
hey all Glenn kirschner here
so friends recent reporting by
propublica revealed that Republican
billionaire megadon or Harlan Crow has
for a very long time been lavishing
millions of dollars worth of luxury
trips and accommodations on Supreme
Court Justice Clarence Thomas
Crowe also reportedly purchased Thomas's
mother's home dumped all kinds of money
into it to make improvements and then of
course let Thomas's mother live there
rent free Crow reportedly paid the
private school tuition of Clarence
Thomas's I believe Grand nephew who he
raises as a son
etc
etc
etc so not surprisingly
Senate committees have requested
information and accounting from crow
about how much money he has dumped into
Clarence Thomas and his family members
in what is a pretty transparent
influence peddling operation
are you ready for Harlan Crow's reply
headline from NBC News Harlan crowed
declines to provide Senate finance
committee with list of gifts he has
given to Justice Clarence Thomas
because of course he declined
the article begins Republican donor
Harlan Crowe wrote in a letter to the
Senate finance committee that he will
not provide a list of gifts he gave to
Justice Clarence Thomas who has faced
recent calls to step down
to resign
to leave the Supreme Court because you
have disgraced this nation
those are my editorial Editions
the article continues
Crow conveyed that decision to committee
chairman Senator Ron Wyden which a
representative for Crow provided to NBC
News
Wyden spokesperson Ryan Carey also
confirmed to NBC that the committee had
received Crowe's letter
friends here's what Crow said
quote we have serious concerns about the
scope of and Authority for this inquiry
as you are aware the committee's powers
to investigate are not unlimited the
letter from Crow's lawyer Michael Bopp
said
the Senate finance committee Bop argued
lacks a legislative purpose in its
request for the list of gifts saying
that the Supreme Court has explicitly
stated that Congress has no authority to
engage in law enforcement investigations
or to conduct investigations aimed at
exposing citizens Private Affairs for
the sake of exposure
the committee also lacks the authority
to conduct a tax audit Bop wrote for the
purpose of determining whether Justice
Thomas complied with ethical standards
the chairman believes should apply in
this instance
in addition Bob said that the panel's
inquiry targeting a Supreme Court
Justice raises substantial separation of
powers concerns
the letter argues that the crows whom
Bob said have been friends with the
Thomases for more than 20 years have
provided Hospitality to the justice and
his family
the IRS Bob wrote has not been
aggressive in arguing a gift tax law
applies in that context
he also said that the sale of properties
related to Thomas which the judge didn't
disclose
complied with federal and state gift tax
laws
wow just
wow
so let's take Harlan Crowe and his
lawyer Mr Bops assertions one at a time
first of all
we have serious concerns about the scope
of and Authority for this inquiry as you
are aware the committee's powers to
investigate are not unlimited I'm quite
sure the committee is aware of its own
powers and the limits thereof
the Senate finance committee lacks a
legislative purpose in its request for
the list of gifts well let's see
maybe Congress should legislate more
robust and farther reaching Financial
disclosure requirements on Supreme Court
Justices and maybe they should legislate
and increase the penalties for knowing
obvious intentional transparent
violations of those financial disclosure
requirements maybe those penalties
should include significant periods of
incarceration if you violate the law and
you abuse the public trust and you
denigrate the legitimacy of the Supreme
Court
as Clarence Thomas has done frankly this
is a legislative purpose Palooza
let's take on Mr Bops next complaint
the committee also lacks the authority
to conduct a tax audit for the purpose
of determining whether Justice Thomas
complied with ethical standards the
chairman believes should apply in this
instance
so what now Harlan Crowe and his
attorney Mr bopper are also representing
the interests of Clarence Thomas they're
defending him they're suggesting he did
nothing wrong don't look at his tax
returns
whatever you do
don't check to see if Clarence Thomas
fully and accurately and truthfully
reported all of the income all of the
benefits the in-kind donations the
tuition payments that he should have
reported no need to pull back that
curtain
but Mr Bop goes on
Bob said that the panel's inquiry
targeting a Supreme Court Justice raises
substantial separation of powers
concerns
wow so now
Harlan Crowe is raising the Grievances
of a co-equal branch of government the
Judiciary the judicial branch Harlan
Crowe believes I guess he gets to assert
that Congress the legislative branches
overstepping its its bounds separation
of powers you have no right to interfere
in the judicial branches business now
what is it that gives Harlan Crowe
standing to assert the the rights and
grievances of the judicial branch of
government
I mean maybe he does feel like a
dues-paying member right with all of the
money and benefits he's lavished on a
Supreme Court Justice maybe he feels
like he's an honorary member of the
Supreme Court right I mean goodness
knows he's paid enough to have influence
there but still he doesn't get to assert
a separation of powers concern that's
really not for him to decide when a
senate committee is seeking information
you know that's generally something we
leave up to the courts
uh Harlan
all right let's just do one more
Bob says that Harlan Crowe has been
friends with the Thomases for more than
20 years Harlan Crowe has provided
Hospitality to the justice and his
family friends has anybody ever provided
you Hospitality that included buying
your mother's home and letting her live
there rent free and putting your kids
through private school
no Harlan Crowe wasn't trying to
purchase influence from a Supreme Court
Justice perished the thought
they're just Buddies
so what now
the answer is actually pretty simple
it's government 101 it's governing 101.
subpoena the information from Harlan
Crowe then subpoena him to testify
let him fight the subpoenas in court he
will lose
and then part two of the simple answer
governing 101 the Department of Justice
should open an investigation
in what seemed to be pretty obvious
violations of public Financial
disclosure laws by Clarence Thomas
you know the integrity and legitimacy of
the United States Supreme Court is too
important not to investigate
Thomas's obvious transgressions
and
because Justice
matters
gloves off
friends gloves off
as always please stay safe please stay
tuned and I look forward to talking with
you all again soon
[Music]

[admin]

Lawrence: Why does Clarence Thomas’s billionaire friend own ‘the garden of evil’ & Hitler’s teapot?
by Lawrence O'Donnell
MSNBC
May 22, 2023 #msnbc #clarencethomas #harlancrow
MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell discusses GOP billionaire mega donor Harlan Crow’s defense of his relationship with Clarence Thomas, his collection of Nazi memorabilia and the statues of dictators that fill his "garden of evil."



Transcript

thank you
the owner of the Garden of Evil wants to
assure you
but the one thing he has never done in
his Garden of Evil
is discuss Supreme Court opinions with
Clarence Thomas
who is his best friend
Harlan Crowe and Clarence Thomas have
not used the term best friend to
describe one another but how could
Clarence Thomas ever
have a better friend
Texas billionaire Harlan Crowe who calls
his backyard The Garden of Evil because
it is populated with statues of some of
the most evil men in history
has allowed Clarence Thomas to live more
of the life of a billionaire than any of
us ever will the trips on the private
jets the trips on the yacht and Harlan
Crowe has pumped money directly into the
joint income of Clarence Thomas and his
wife Harlan Crowe contributed more than
enough money to fully fund Virginia
Thomas's salary at one of the places she
once worked and Harlan Khloe allows
Clarence Thomas's mother to live rent
free in a house that Harlan Crow bought
from Clarence Thomas
putting some of the purchase price of
that house directly into Clarence
Thomas's pocket Harlan Crowe then fixed
up the house now Clarence Thomas's
mother is living at no expense at all to
Clarence Thomas all thanks to the best
friend a Supreme Court Justice could
ever have as long as that Justice does
not mind being exposed as the most
corrupt Supreme Court Justice the court
has ever had
if there has been a more corrupt Supreme
Court Justice than Clarence Thomas
then that corruption
has remained Secret
no such corruption has ever been made
public
in an interview with the Atlantic
published today Harlan Crowe expresses
astonishment that anyone could ever be
concerned about the Integrity of
Clarence Thomas
I have never nor would I ever think
about talking about matters that relate
to the Judiciary with Justice Clarence
Thomas Crowe said he told the Atlantic
they talk about things like the weather
and sports and then decided to amend
that after the interview in an email
saying quote it is not realistic for two
people to be friends and not talk about
their jobs from time to time Thomas has
spoken to him of his fondness for his
clerics or about bumping into Justice
Stephen Breyer at Target but Crow wrote
that it would be wrong
for him to talk about court cases from
my point of view that is off limits he
and I don't go there and so if you're
comfortable
taking Texas billionaire Harlan Crowe's
word for it there's nothing to be
worried about
but it is hard to be comfortable with
anything that Harlan Crowe says
including quote the kids used to be
scared of them
that's what he said about the statues in
his Garden of Evil which include Lennon
and Starlin and other dictators from
around the world dead dictators
what manner of man
puts statues
of evildoers in his garden and then
enjoys them
what kind of father leaves them there
knowing that his kids
are scared by them
wandering around the Garden of Evil
Harlan Crowe told his Atlantic
interviewer quote I'm not looking to be
odd well he has failed miserably
the Atlantic makes the mistake of
printing the line he feels he has acted
with the purest and most honorable
intentions no one at the Atlantic knows
what Harlan Crowe feels but this is
exactly the kind of misconception that
access journalism always produces you
will see that kind of reporting in the
New York Times and everywhere that
access journalism is practiced the
journalistically correct way to deliver
that line would be to say he claims
he has acted with the purest and most
honorable intentions that leaves open
the possibility that he did act with the
purest and most honorable intentions and
it leaves open the possibility that he
didn't but the Atlantic has decided to
remove your option as a reader and
present to you as a fact that the
Atlantic knows what Harlan Crowe feels
the more you know about him the more
impossible it is to know what he feels
what would you feel
holding Hitler's teapot in your hand
could you do it
if you were in a room and were told
that was Hitler's teapot
would you touch it
would you want to
would your fingers be drawn to the
handle of that teapot that brought
Comfort to Adolf Hitler while he was
Exterminating six million Jews in his
death camps
what would it feel like to touch that
handle
if you dared
Harlan Crow knows
he owns the teapot
he claims it's important that such
things be preserved but do they need to
be preserved in his home
couldn't he after paying a Billionaire's
ransom for Hitler's teapot and pictures
painted by Hitler and Hitler's table
Linens couldn't Harlan Crow donate them
to the appropriate Archive of such
material
why own them
why have them in your home why sleep
under the same roof with Hitler's
possessions things Hitler touched
can the Atlantic tell us what Harlan
Crowe feels
when his hand grips
Hitler's teapot
can the Atlantic tell us what Harlan
Crowe feels when he falls asleep in a
house where he knows Hitler's paintings
are peacefully residing with him
Harlan Crowe decided to take Hitler's
paintings out of their normal display
position when he was doing a fundraiser
for failed presidential candidate Marco
Rubio in 2015. congresswoman Debbie
Wasserman Schultz complained then
publicly that Marco Rubio was going into
a home with Hitler's paintings for a
fundraiser so only in 2015 did it occur
to Harlan crow that maybe Hitler's
paintings shouldn't be on prominent
public display in his home
now the biggest most prominent painting
on display in his home is a portrait of
his best friend Clarence Thomas which
seems hardly controversial at all when
the alternative would be having Hitler's
paintings hanging there instead
Harlan Crowe owns a copy of Hitler's
book Mein Kampf signed by Adolf Hitler
so when Harlan Crowe is holding Hitler's
book in his hands he knows that Hitler
himself held this particular copy
of this book in his hands
I think I might feel as if my hands were
on fire
if I were forced to touch that book
how does Harlan Crowe feel
when he holds Hitler's book signed
by Hitler
we don't know
the Atlantic doesn't know
Harlan Crowe tells the Atlantic it's
kind of weird to think that if you're a
Justice on the Supreme Court you can't
have friends of course you can have
friends if you're on the Supreme Court
they all have friends
that's not the issue but it is entirely
possible that Harlem Crowe is not
intelligent enough
to actually see what the real issue is
Harlan Crowe was not asked if he thinks
there's the slightest chance that he
would have befriended Clarence Thomas if
Clarence Thomas were not a Supreme Court
Justice Harlan Pro went out of his way
to meet Clarence Thomas by giving him a
ride on his private jet in the fourth
year of Clarence Thomas's service on the
Supreme Court
he says they have discovered we share a
love of Motown
our own Crow complains to the Atlantic
if I go out and help an old lady across
the street this afternoon there'll be
something written about my diabolical
purpose and evil intent
has he ever helped an old lady across
the street
would he help her across the street
if she were not a Supreme Court Justice
despite his attempts to appear normal
and sound normal Harlan Crowe is indeed
somewhere far beyond
odd
about the Hitler paintings and Hitler
possessions in his home Harlan Crowe
told the Atlantic the idea that I might
offend somebody particularly somebody I
care about one of my friends with this
stuff that hurts I would never want to
do that Harlan Crowe was not asked if he
has any Jewish friends
did he think Debbie Wasserman Schultz
was kidding
when she publicly expressed her offense
but Harlan Crowe gave Hitler's paintings
and his teapot a happy home
Harlan Crowe was born in Texas in 1947
he was educated in the Deep South at the
height of the Civil Rights Movement how
did he feel about that
the Atlantic doesn't know and the
Atlantic didn't ask he went to college
in Atlanta while Martin Luther King was
preaching to his Atlanta congregation
across town Martin Luther King Jr was
the most famous person living in Atlanta
when Harlan Crowe went to college there
what did Harlan Crowe think about Martin
Luther King
the Atlantic did not ask
one of Harlan Crowe's neighbors is
Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones here is
Jerry Jones in Little Rock Arkansas when
President Eisenhower used the American
Military to force the integration of a
public high school there
Jerry Jones was among the protesters
Jerry Jones was there to protest
integration and cheer on and try to
maintain
segregation
what was Harlan Crowe doing that day
what was he feeling as the whole country
watched
that horrible display of racism in
Little Rock Arkansas that day the whole
country was watching
has Harlan Crowe ever talked to his
neighbor Jerry Jones about that day
there are no segregationists in Harlan
Crow's Garden of Evil there are no
American slave owners in Harlan Pro's
Garden of Evil Harlan Crowe claims to
abhor Donald Trump
but there is no Trump statue
In The Garden of Evil
[Music]
thank you

[admin]

Lawyers with supreme court business paid Clarence Thomas aide via Venmo: Payments to Rajan Vasisht, an aide from 2019-21, underscore ties between the justice and lawyers who argue cases in front of him
by Stephanie Kirchgaessner in Washington @skirchy
The Guardian
Wed 12 Jul 2023 06.00 EDT

Luxury trips and property deals: supreme court controversies explained

Several lawyers who have had business before the supreme court, including one who successfully argued to end race-conscious admissions at universities, paid money to a top aide to Justice Clarence Thomas, according to the aide’s Venmo transactions. The payments appear to have been made in connection to Thomas’s 2019 Christmas party.

The payments to Rajan Vasisht, who served as Thomas’s aide from July 2019 to July 2021, seem to underscore the close ties between Thomas, who is embroiled in ethics scandals following a series of revelations about his relationship with a wealthy billionaire donor, and certain senior Washington lawyers who argue cases and have other business in front of the justice.

Vasisht’s Venmo account – which was public prior to requesting comment for this article and is no longer – show that he received seven payments in November and December 2019 from lawyers who previously served as Thomas legal clerks. The amount of the payments is not disclosed, but the purpose of each payment is listed as either “Christmas party”, “Thomas Christmas Party”, “CT Christmas Party” or “CT Xmas party”, in an apparent reference to the justice’s initials.

However, it remains unclear what the funds were for.

The lawyers who made the Venmo transactions were: Patrick Strawbridge, a partner at Consovoy McCarthy who recently successfully argued that affirmative action violated the US constitution; Kate Todd, who served as White House deputy counsel under Donald Trump at the time of the payment and is now a managing party of Ellis George Cipollone’s law office; Elbert Lin, the former solicitor general of West Virginia who played a key role in a supreme court case that limited the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to regulate greenhouse gas emissions; and Brian Schmalzbach, a partner at McGuire Woods who has argued multiple cases before the supreme court.

Other lawyers who made payments include Manuel Valle, a graduate of Hillsdale College and the University of Chicago Law School who clerked for Thomas last year and is currently working as a managing associate at Sidley, and Liam Hardy, who was working at the Department of Justice’s office of legal counsel at the time the payment was made and now serves as an appeals court judge for the armed forces.

Will Consovoy, who died earlier this year, also made a payment. Consovoy clerked for Thomas during the 2008-09 term and was considered a rising star in conservative legal circles. After his death, the New York Times reported that Consovoy had come away from his time working for Thomas “with the conviction that the court was poised to tilt further to the right – and that constitutional rulings that had once been considered out of reach by conservatives, on issues like voting rights, abortion and affirmative action, would suddenly be within grasp”.

None of the lawyers who made payments responded to emailed questions from the Guardian.

According to his résumé, Vasisht’s duties included assisting the justice with the administrative functioning of his chambers, including personal correspondence and his personal and office schedule.

Vasisht did not respond to an emailed list of questions from the Guardian, including questions about who solicited the payments, how much individuals paid, and what the purpose of the payments was. The Guardian also asked questions about the nature of Thomas’s Christmas party, how many guests were invited and where the event took place.

Reached via WhatsApp and asked if he would make a statement, Vasisht replied: “No thank you, I do not want to be contacted.”

Legal experts said the payments to Vasisht raised red flags.

Richard Painter, who served as the chief White House ethics lawyer in the George W Bush administration and has been a vocal critic of the role of dark money in politics, said it was “not appropriate” for former Thomas law clerks who were established in private practice to – in effect – send money to the supreme court via Venmo.

“There is no excuse for it. Thomas could invite them to his Christmas party and he could attend Christmas parties, as long as they are not discussing any cases. His Christmas party should not be paid for by lawyers,” Painter said. “A federal government employee collecting money from lawyers for any reason … I don’t see how that works.”

Painter said he would possibly make an exception if recent law clerks were paying their own way for a party. But almost all of the lawyers who made the payments are senior litigators at big law firms.

Kedric Payne, the general counsel and senior director of ethics at the Campaign Legal Center, said that – based on available information – it was possible that the former clerks were paying their own party expenses, and not expenses for Thomas, which he believed was different than random lawyers in effect paying admission to an exclusive event to influence the judge.

He added: “But the point remains that the public is owed an explanation so they don’t have to speculate.”

Thomas has been embroiled in ethics scandals for weeks following bombshell revelations by ProPublica, the investigative outlet which published new revelations about how the billionaire conservative donor Harlan Crow has paid for lavish holidays for the justice, bought Thomas’s mother’s home, and paid for the judge’s great-nephew’s private school education. The stories have prompted an outcry on Capitol Hill, where Democrats have called for the passage of new ethics rules.

Thomas is known for having close relationships with his former clerks. A 2019 article in the Atlantic noted that the rightwing justice has a “vast network” of former clerks and mentees who are now serving as federal judges and served in senior positions throughout the Trump administration. The large presence of former Thomas clerks, the Atlantic noted, meant that the “notoriously silent justice may end up with an outsize voice in the legal system for years to come”.

Thomas’s chamber did not respond to a request for comment.

[admin]

A Federal Judge Asks: Does the Supreme Court Realize How Bad It Smells?
by Michael Ponsor
New York Times
July 14, 2023

Judge Pansor is a senior judge on the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts.

What has gone wrong with the Su preme Court's sense of smell?

I joined the federal bench in 1984, some years before any of the justices currently on the Supreme Court. Throughout my career, I have been bound and guided by a written code of conduct, backed by a committee of colleagues I can call on for advice. In fact, I checked with a member of that committee before writing this essay.

A few times in my nearly 40 years on the bench, complaints have been filed against me. This is not uncommon for a federal judge. So far, none have been found to have merit, but all of these complaints have been processed with respect, and I have paid close attention to them.

The Supreme Court has avoided imposing a formal ethical apparatus on itself like the one that applies to all other federal judges. I understand the general concern, in part. A complaint mechanism could become a political tool to paralyze the court or a playground for gadflies. However, a skillfully drafted code could overcome this problem. Even a nonenforceable code that the justices formally pledged to respect would be an improvement on the current void.

Reasonable people may disagree on this. The more important, uncontroversial point is that if there will not be formal ethical constraints on our Supreme Court, or even if there will be, its justices must have functioning noses. They must keep themselves far from any conduct with a dubious aroma, even if it may not breach a formal rule.

The fact is, when you become a judge, stuff happens. Many years ago, as a fairly new federal magistrate judge, I was chatting about our kids with a local attorney I knew only slightly. As our conversation unfolded, he mentioned that he'd been planning to take his 10-year-old to a Red Sox game that weekend but their plan had fallen through. Would I like to use his tickets?

I was tempted. The tickets were beyond my usual price range, and the game would be a fun outing with my 7-year-old. It didn't seem to me that the lawyer was trying to do anything improper. It seemed to be - and almost certainly was - just a spur-of-the-moment impulse arising out of a friendly conversation. Moreover, the seats at Fenway Park, like the much more expensive seat on the private jet used free by Justice Samuel Alito on his Alaska vacation, would probably go empty if I didn't take them. Who would be harmed?

To my chagrin, as I pondered the situation, I became aware of an aroma of something off. Not an actual smell, of course, but something like that - something like a whiff of milk on the verge of going sour or a pan left on the stove too long. It wasn't that the lawyer had evil intent; it was that I was approaching a boundary. Silently gnashing my teeth, I turned the tickets down.

A few years later, after I'd received my appointment as a life-tenured U.S. district judge, I issued a decision reversing the Social Security Administration's denial of disability benefits to an older plaintiff. I was in our clerk's office one day when the man and his wife approached me with a package. He had a woodworking hobby, and inside the package was an exquisitely crafted oak pencil case with bronze hinges. My ruling had made a big difference for them, and they wanted to extend this modest, personal gesture of gratitude. Again, they were obviously not being underhanded. Their lawsuit was over, and this was probably the last they would ever see of me. Nevertheless, as my police officer friends tell me, the road to perdition starts with a free cup of coffee. As politely as I could, I turned the pencil case down. It still pains me to remember their embarrassed, crestfallen faces.

All my judicial colleagues, whoever has appointed them, run into situations like these regularly, and I expect they have responded in just the same way. You don't just stay inside the lines; you stay well inside the lines. This is not a matter of politics or judicial philosophy. It is ethics in the trenches.

The recent descriptions of the behavior of some of our justices and particularly their attempts to defend their conduct have not just raised my eyebrows, they've raised the whole top of my head. Lavish, no-cost vacations? Hypertechnical arguments about how a private airplane flight is a kind of facility? A justice's spouse prominently involved in advocating on issues before the court without the justice's recusal? Repeated omissions in mandatory financial disclosure statements brushed under the rug as inadvertent? A justice's taxpayer-financed staff reportedly helping to promote her books? Private school tuition for a justice's family member covered by a wealthy benefactor? Wow.

Although the exact numbers fluctuate because of vacancies, the core of our federal judiciary comprises roughly 540 magistrate judges, 670 district judges, 180 appeals court judges and nine Supreme Court justices - fewer than 1,500 men and women in a country of more than 330 million people and 3.8 million square miles. Much depends on this small cohort's acute sense of smell, its instinctive, uncompromising integrity and its appearance of integrity. If reports are true, some of our justices are, sadly, letting us down.

To me, this feels personal. For the country, it feels ominous. What in the world has happened to the Supreme Court's nose?

Michael Pansor is a senior judge on the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts.

[admin]

Supreme Court Justice Issues DANGEROUS STATEMENT [ “I know this is a controversial view, but I’m willing to say it ... No provision in the Constitution gives them the authority to regulate the Supreme Court — period.”] and Democrats FIGHT BACK
by Michael Popok
MeidasTouch
Aug 5, 2023

Michael Popok of Legal AF reports on the battle brewing between Supreme Court Justice Sam Alito and Senator democrats, as Alito tells the Wall Street Journal that Congress is powerless to impose a code of ethics and conduct on the Supreme Court, and Senator Murphy fires back on national television.



Transcript

go to something that you and your
Democratic colleagues are working on in
the Senate and that is a code of conduct
for the Supreme Court I mean this is
something you introduce regularly but we
did get a response this week from
Supreme Court Justice Samuel lolito and
he said quote I know this is a
controversial view but I'm willing to
say it no provision in the Constitution
gives them meaning Congress the
authority to regulate the Supreme Court
period what do you think he is saying
there and what is your response
first of all it's just stunningly wrong
and and he
um should know that more than anyone
else because his seat on the Supreme
Court exists only because of an Act
passed by Congress it is Congress that
establishes the number of justices on
the Supreme Court it is Congress that
has passed in the past requirements for
justices to disclose certain information
and so it is just wrong on the facts to
say that Congress doesn't have anything
to do with the rules guiding the Supreme
Court in fact from the very beginning
Congress has set those rules but it is
even more disturbing that Alito feels
the need to insert himself into a
congressional debate and it is just more
evidence that these justices on the
Supreme Court these conservative
justices just see themselves as
politicians they just see themselves as
a second legislative body that has just
as much power and right to impose their
political will on the country as
Congress does they're going to bend the
law in order to impose their right-wing
view of how the country should work on
the rest of us and it's why we need to
pass this Common Sense ethics
legislation to at least make sure we
know that these guys aren't in bed
having their Lifestyles paid for by
conservative donors as we have
unfortunately seen uh in these latest
Revelations
this is Michael popock legally AF that
video sets up the Battle Royale between
the Supreme Court Sam Alito and the
Senate Democrats over whether we are
finally once and for all going to have a
U.S Supreme Court that adheres to a code
of conduct a code of ethics mandatory
disqualification the disclosure of
Financial
inter-relationships and entanglements
between parties before the court and
judges sitting up on that bench are we
going to have that or are we not are we
a country of law or of men which is it
it can't be both and this constant
ridiculous struggle where the Supreme
Court says we're we're above ethics
we're above codes of responsibility
really I mean last I looked you were
people human beings that put on your
pants one at a time and you're given the
highest honor in the the country
being confirmed to be one of nine U.S
Supreme Court Justices for a lifetime
appointment you don't think that comes
along with responsibility
certainly Chris Murphy does and Chris
Murphy's just schooled judge Alito and
told him I don't know what you're
talking about it is that he's
flabbergasted by two things one the fact
that Alito who's supposed to be part of
the judicial branch has intervened in
the world of politics and is effectively
lobbying Congress and getting in the
middle of the legislative branch
separation of powers co-equal branches
occupying their own spheres you're not
supposed to color outside the lines and
do it so blatantly and transparently
it's the only thing transparent about
San molito is his transparent lobbying
politically because he's trying to tell
his bosses in Congress because they are
and Chris Murphy just told them why
um that he's above the law that he's a
below he's above ethics and he's above
transparency when it comes to his
financial entanglements with right wing
people
so you saw how we got there that was
Chris Murphy today on or a Sunday
morning talk show responding to Sam
Alito but the Wall Street Journal
article was from a couple of days ago
and that article written by uh Paul
Rifkin and James tarante is entitled
Samuel Alito the Supreme Court's a plane
spoken Defender that was the title of
the article and buried in the article
which was a four-hour interview that Sam
Leto gave it was like a very fawning
puff piece put out by the Wall Street
Journal four hours calling Sam Alito at
one point and important Justice with a
distinctive uh stop interpretive style
that's one way of putting it but during
that interview he said and I quote and
you can hear it in Chris Murphy's video
that I played that uh he says I know
this is a controversial thing to say but
Congress nowhere in the Constitution no
there's no provision of the Constitution
that gives Congress the authority to
regulate the Supreme Court period
meaning back off you don't have the
right or the ability to impose a code of
conduct or code of ethics on the Supreme
Court and you heard Chris Murphy said
what are you talking about it is
Congress
it is congress's Power by which Sam
Alito and the others their seat even
exists right that was an act of Congress
it's an act of Congress that sets the
number of Supreme Court Justices its
Congress that passed and imposes a
financial disclosure obligations on the
Supreme Court and it's Congress that
controls the purse string all the money
that John Roberts is spending as the
head of the of the Judiciary the
judicial branch for all of its court
system and Court personnel and judges
and clerks and courthouses you ever seen
some of these courthouses these
Limestone buildings running three four
five eight hundred million dollars a
piece in cities that has to be approved
through Congress okay they don't have
their own slush fund not that I'm aware
of to pay for that so to say that
Congress has to back out and not have
oversight over a branch for which they
fund
right just shows you the depth of
immorality and really intellectual
dishonesty being practiced by San bolito
and the others Sam Alito who who of
course got caught up over the summer in
the ethics Scandal it's not just
Clarence Thomas taking millions of
dollars of vacations with right-wing
extremists and Nazi memorabilia
collectors like uh the heir of the
travel Crow fortune and not disclosing
it or selling his property including his
family Homestead another vacation
property to other right-wing Maga people
who have business in front of the Court
San Molino did it too he's taken Alaskan
you know going up being you know
glamping luxury camping trips in uh in
Fishing lodges that the average person
would never be able to afford paid for
it by you know the founders of the
Federalist Society you know he's dying
in private homes with people on the
right-wing Christian right who have
business in front of the court without
disclosing it it so it's of course Sam
Alito is hurt by it but don't forget who
Sam Alito is he's also the one that
probably leaked through his office the
Dobbs decision when it was in draft form
in order to ensure that it would be uh
voted in past in in past right taking
away a constitutional right for a woman
to choose in a bodily autonomy that
Dom's decision not Sam malito and good
on Chris Murphy and Sheldon Whitehouse
for taking on the U.S Supreme Court
because if they don't do it who's going
to you see the you see the
megalomaniacal approach by the U.S
Supreme Court we're above it all
really you were just human beings when
you were being confirmed and begging for
the job saying anything that would get
you through the confirmation process
even things that we now know were untrue
about your respect for precedent
we know you lied your way most of you
lied your way through
the confirmation hearings that you each
had Clarence Thomas We Know What You Did
related to your prior sex harassment and
discrimination allegations and Anita
Hill we'll leave that aside for a minute
the rest of you lied about what you
would do if you ever faced with a
challenge to Roe v Wade
and so and you've got a lifetime
appointment
and then you're telling me we also can't
regulate you we can't make what you do
transparent we can't mandate how you're
going to be
um disqualified that is what Senate Bill
359 does Sheldon White House's bill
that's what we're talking about right
that is the Supreme Court ethics recusal
and transparency act and as a side note
as a side note to Chris Murphy Senator
Murphy you just heard from he has
literally introduced every year for the
last 10 years a similar Bill to add a
code of conduct to the U.S Supreme Court
and its justices it's gotten shot down
every time whether whether Democrats
were in control or Republicans are in
control there's Chris Murphy you know
offering that bill but now with all the
spotlight for all of the
um conflicts of interests and financial
entanglement that we've seen primarily
on the right-wing Maga Supreme Court
it's time for the Senate to pass Senate
Bill 359. the Democrats have the votes
they have the president waiting to sign
it and it needs to be done and people
like Sam Alito need to take their big
noses and get it out of politics and
lobbying you know you don't see John
Roberts doing that John Roberts refused
to appear in front of the senate
committee because he said it would be
political and there's a separate nation
of powers San molito said well I've
given a four-hour interview with a Wall
Street Journal I'll say whatever I want
right and as soon as Sheldon White House
pulls you in with a subpoena to the
senate committee and Chris Murphy joins
you're going to say I can't make it
right Sam
is that right
you're going to say you're not available
separation of powers wouldn't be
appropriate
then it's not appropriate for you to get
on and interview with the Wall Street
Journal and have you attack Congress and
they're what they're only trying to do
for the American people which is to have
a out of control Supreme Court a rogue
Supreme Court reigned in and subject to
the exact same code of ethics and code
of conduct that house members senators
and every other judge in America state
or federal is subject to that's all we
want
Supreme Court and you're and I'm sorry
that you think you're above it all in
your Ivory Tower
but if you want to start rebuilding any
level of credibility with the American
people that that branch of government
literally has none at this point this
would be a good starting place don't
give interviews to attack s 359 the bill
and the Senate support it and Justice
Roberts you lead you be the moral leader
do that too we'll continue to keep your
feet to the fire here on hot digs just
like this one only on the Midas touch
Network that's where me Michael popock
that's where all that's where I do all
my work at the intersection of Law and
politics watch us on legal AF every
Wednesday and Saturday because we pull
all this together these kind of Stories
We curate them at the intersection of
U.S law and politics follow me on all
things social media at Ms poke this is
Michael popock legal AF reporting

[admin]

Florida schools will begin using Clarence Thomas as an example of a black man who developed great wealth and social standing as a result of being owned by rich white men.

-- Charles Carreon, 8/11/23

********************

DeSantis doubles down on claim that some Blacks benefited from slavery: GOP presidential candidate draws renewed criticism after suggesting slavery helped African Americans develop skills such as being a blacksmith
by Kevin Sullivan and Lori Rozsa
Washington Post
July 22, 2023 at 5:32 p.m. EDT

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Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is intensifying his efforts to de-emphasize racism in his state’s public school curriculum by arguing that some Black people benefited from being enslaved and defending his state’s new African American history standards that civil rights leaders and scholars say misrepresents centuries of U.S. reality.

“They’re probably going to show that some of the folks that eventually parlayed, you know, being a blacksmith into doing things later in life,” DeSantis said on Friday in response to reporters’ questions while standing in front of a nearly all-White crowd of supporters.

DeSantis, a GOP presidential candidate who is lagging in polls against the front-runner, former president Donald Trump, and is trying to reset his campaign, quickly drew criticism from educators and even some in his party. He has built his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination on attacking what he calls the radical liberal policies of President Biden and the Democratic Party, but the latest remarks could alienate Black voters just as the GOP tries to court them.

Former U.S. Rep. Will Hurd of Texas, who announced last month that he was joining the race for the GOP nomination, blasted the idea that enslaved people were able to use slavery as some kind of training program.

“Slavery wasn’t a jobs program that taught beneficial skills,” Hurd, the son of a Black father and a White mother, tweeted. “It was literally dehumanizing and subjugated people as property because they lacked any rights or freedoms.”

DeSantis, however, is continuing to defend Florida’s new curriculum, which covers a broad range of topics and includes the assertion for middle school instruction that “slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.”

DeSantis said he “wasn’t involved” in writing the new teaching materials, which took effect this week. But he credited “a lot of scholars” with creating “the most robust standards in African American history probably anywhere in the country.”

Civil rights leaders, educators and others have expressed revulsion at the idea that enslaved people benefited from the experience.

As Biden’s running mate, Vice President Harris has stepped up her attack-dog role, and on Friday traveled to Jacksonville to assail DeSantis’s policies in his home state. She emphasized that slavery involved rape, torture and “some of the worst examples of depriving people of humanity in our world.”

Florida State Rep. Fentrice Driskell, a Tampa Democrat who last year became the first Black woman to become House Democratic Leader, called DeSantis’s latest remarks a continuation of DeSantis’s “assault on Black history.”

“Let’s really dissect what he’s saying here,” she said. “He’s saying that to be ripped away from your homelands and brought to another country against your will, or to be born into the atrocity of the dehumanizing institution that was slavery, that those horrors are some way somehow outweighed by the benefit that you get a trade. Are you kidding me?”

DeSantis issued a statement Friday saying, “Democrats like Kamala Harris have to lie about Florida’s educational standards to cover for their agenda of indoctrinating students and pushing sexual topics onto children.” His campaign did not respond to an email on Saturday requesting comment.

Some on the right defended DeSantis, including Fox News host Jesse Watters.

“No one is arguing slaves benefited from slavery,” Watters said Friday on his prime time show. “No one is saying that. It’s not true. They are teaching how Black people develop skills during slavery in some instances that can be applied for their own personal benefit.”

Biden campaign co-chairman Cedric L. Richmond attacked DeSantis’s defense of the new Florida curriculum as “disgusting.” He added in a statement on Saturday that it was “a symptom of the extremism that’s infected the Republican candidates running for president. There’s no debate over slavery. It was utterly evil with zero redeeming qualities.”

Marvin Dunn, a professor emeritus at Florida International University and author of “A History of Florida: Through Black Eyes,” said DeSantis would gain no political advantage from his argument because “it is so outrageous that people are going to reject it.”

“These children know in their hearts and in their minds that slavery was evil,” he said.

“One of the main things about slavery, beyond the physical damage that it did to people of so many generations, was that it prevented people from becoming what they could have become,” he said.

“So what if you became a carpenter or a blacksmith or a good maid? Your chances of that were not determined by you, it was determined by somebody else. That’s not a rationalization for enslavement.”

[admin]

Clarence Thomas’ 38 Vacations: The Other Billionaires Who Have Treated the Supreme Court Justice to Luxury Travel
by Brett Murphy and Alex Mierjeski
Propublica
Aug. 10, 5:45 a.m. EDT



The fullest accounting yet shows how Thomas has secretly reaped the benefits from a network of wealthy and well-connected patrons that is far more extensive than previously understood.

During his three decades on the Supreme Court, Clarence Thomas has enjoyed steady access to a lifestyle most Americans can only imagine. A cadre of industry titans and ultrawealthy executives have treated him to far-flung vacations aboard their yachts, ushered him into the premium suites at sporting events and sent their private jets to fetch him — including, on more than one occasion, an entire 737. It’s a stream of luxury that is both more extensive and from a wider circle than has been previously understood.

Like clockwork, Thomas’ leisure activities have been underwritten by benefactors who share the ideology that drives his jurisprudence. Their gifts include:

At least 38 destination vacations, including a previously unreported voyage on a yacht around the Bahamas; 26 private jet flights, plus an additional eight by helicopter; a dozen VIP passes to professional and college sporting events, typically perched in the skybox; two stays at luxury resorts in Florida and Jamaica; and one standing invitation to an uber-exclusive golf club overlooking the Atlantic coast.

This accounting of Thomas’ travel, revealed for the first time here from an array of previously unavailable information, is the fullest to date of the generosity that has regularly afforded Thomas a lifestyle far beyond what his income could provide. And it is almost certainly an undercount.

While some of the hospitality, such as stays in personal homes, may not have required disclosure, Thomas appears to have violated the law by failing to disclose flights, yacht cruises and expensive sports tickets, according to ethics experts.

Perhaps even more significant, the pattern exposes consistent violations of judicial norms, experts, including seven current and former federal judges appointed by both parties, told ProPublica. “In my career I don’t remember ever seeing this degree of largesse given to anybody,” said Jeremy Fogel, a former federal judge who served for years on the judicial committee that reviews judges’ financial disclosures. “I think it’s unprecedented.”

This year, ProPublica revealed Texas real estate billionaire Harlan Crow’s generosity toward Thomas, including vacations, private jet flights, gifts, the purchase of his mother’s house in Georgia and tuition payments. In an April statement, the justice defended his relationship with Crow. The Crows “are among our dearest friends,” Thomas said. “As friends do, we have joined them on a number of family trips.”

The New York Times recently surfaced VIP treatment from wealthy businessmen he met through the Horatio Alger Association, an exclusive nonprofit. Among them were David Sokol, a former top executive at Berkshire Hathaway, and H. Wayne Huizenga, a billionaire who turned Blockbuster and Waste Management into national goliaths. (The Times noted Thomas gives access to the Supreme Court building for Horatio Alger events; ProPublica confirmed that the access has cost $1,500 or more in donations per person.)

Records and interviews show Thomas had another benefactor, oil baron Paul “Tony” Novelly, whose gifts to the justice have not previously been reported. ProPublica’s totals in this article include trips from Crow.

Each of these men — Novelly, Huizenga, Sokol and Crow — appears to have first met Thomas after he ascended to the Supreme Court. With the exception of Crow, their names are nowhere in Thomas’ financial disclosures, where justices are required by law to publicly report most gifts.


From left to right, H. Wayne Huizenga, David Sokol and Paul “Tony” Novelly. These business magnates apparently came into Clarence Thomas’ life after he was appointed to one of the most sacrosanct positions of power in American government. Credit: Joel Auerbach/Getty Images, Bloomberg/Getty Images and the Horatio Alger Association Website

The total value of the undisclosed trips they’ve given Thomas since 1991, the year he was appointed to the Supreme Court, is difficult to measure. But it’s likely in the millions.

Huizenga sent his personal 737 to pick Thomas up and bring him to South Florida at least twice, according to John Wener, a former flight attendant and chef on board the plane. If he were picked up in D.C., the five-hour round trip would have cost at least $130,000 each time had Thomas chartered the jet himself, according to estimates from jet charter companies. In February 2016, Thomas flew on Crow’s private jet from Washington to New Haven, Connecticut, before heading back on the jet just three hours later. ProPublica previously reported the flight, but newly obtained U.S. Marshals Service records reveal its purpose: Thomas met with several Yale Law School deans for a tour of the room where they planned to display a portrait of the justice. (Crow’s foundation also gave the school $105,000, earmarked for the “Justice Thomas Portrait Fund,” tax filings show.)

Don Fox, the former general counsel of the U.S. Office of Government Ethics and the senior ethics official in the executive branch, said, “It’s just the height of hypocrisy to wear the robes and live the lifestyle of a billionaire.” Taxpayers, he added, have the right to expect that Supreme Court justices are not living on the dime of others.

Fox, who worked under both Democratic and Republican administrations, said he advised every new political appointee the same thing: Your wealthy friends are the ones you had before you were appointed. “You don’t get to acquire any new ones,” he told them.

Thomas and Novelly did not respond to a detailed list of questions for this story. Huizenga died in 2018 and his son, who is the president of the family’s holding company, also did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

In a statement to ProPublica, Sokol said he’s been close friends with the Thomases for 21 years and acknowledged traveling with and occasionally hosting them. He defended the justice as upright and ethical. “We have never once discussed any pending court matter,” Sokol said. “Our conversations have always revolved around helping young people, sports, and family matters.”

“As to the use of private aviation,” he added, “I believe that given security concerns all of the Supreme Court justices should either fly privately or on governmental aircraft.”

The justices have said they follow court rules prohibiting them from accepting gifts from a group of people so frequently that “a reasonable person would believe that the public office is being used for private gain.” But what actually constitutes a gift under those rules is ambiguous and, in practice, justices have few restrictions on what they can accept. Other members of the court have accepted travel underwritten by wealthy businessmen and speaking invitations at universities. Stephen Breyer accepted a flight to a Nantucket wedding from a Democratic megadonor. Ruth Bader Ginsburg took a tour of Israel and Jordan paid for by an Israeli billionaire. Those gifts are public because Breyer and Ginsburg disclosed them.

Thomas, however, is apparently an extreme outlier for the volume and frequency of all the undisclosed vacations he’s received. He once complained that he sacrificed wealth to sit on the court, though he depicted the choice as a matter of conscience. “The job is not worth doing for what they pay,” he told the bar association in Savannah, Georgia, in 2001, “but it is worth doing for the principle.”

To track Thomas’ relationships and travel, ProPublica examined flight data, emails from airport and university officials, security detail records, tax court filings, meeting minutes and a trove of photographs from personal albums, including cards that Thomas’ wife, Ginni, sent to friends. In addition, reporters interviewed more than 100 eyewitnesses and other sources: jet and helicopter pilots, flight attendants, airport workers, yacht crew members, security guards, photographers, waitresses, caterers, chefs, drivers, river rafting guides and C-suite executives.

ProPublica has not identified any legal cases that Huizenga, Sokol or Novelly had at the Supreme Court during their documented relationships with Thomas, although they all work in industries significantly impacted by the court’s decisions.

In a small-circulation biography given to Huizenga’s friends and family, Thomas acknowledged that he and Huizenga discussed some of the billionaire’s companies but said their relationship was never transactional. “It wasn’t that kind of friendship,” he told the interviewer. The justice said they’d prefer to go to a small restaurant in a strip mall or sit on the billionaire’s lawn and drink tea or diet soda.

“We are in a society where everything is quid pro quo,” Thomas said, but not with the Huizengas. “I don’t do anything for them and they can’t do anything for me.”

“Four Lucky Couples”

On Labor Day weekend 2019, Thomas boarded a private plane in Washington, D.C., for the first leg of a sojourn out West. The vacation had been months in the making and, thanks to Sokol, it was all taken care of. He’s hosted the Thomases virtually every summer for a decade.

The first stop was the Great Plains. It was the home opener at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, which Ginni Thomas had attended before transferring. The Thomases were joined there by other couples, including one of the justice’s most vocal advocates, Mark Paoletta, who then worked for the federal government, and his wife.

Sokol, a major university donor who graduated from the Omaha campus, arranged for the group to attend the football and volleyball games with all-access passes. Clarence Thomas met with the football team the day before the game. The group walked out of the tunnel before kickoff. During halftime, they stood on the sidelines to watch the marching band perform, at one point posing for a picture in the end zone: “The Sokols took four lucky couples to the first Nebraska footbal game of the season,” Ginni Thomas wrote in one of the card captions.


Sokol, back left, has arranged for Thomas and others to attend several sporting events at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. The invitations come with all-access passes and seats in a luxury suite. The justice’s wife, Ginni, has memorialized some of these trips in cards to friends. Credit: Obtained by ProPublica

Sokol runs a private equity firm and now also chairs a holding company that owns large international shipping and power utility corporations. He resigned from Berkshire Hathaway in 2011 amid an internal investigation by the company that found he had violated its insider trading policy. (At the time, Sokol denied wrongdoing and said his resignation was unrelated to the episode; he was never indicted.)

That Saturday, the group watched both the football and volleyball games from luxury suites. The football skybox, which typically costs $40,000 annually, belonged to Tom Osborne, a former Republican congressman who was also the head coach of the team for 25 years. Hosting the Thomases had ripple effects. A local priest requested a ticket for his 87-year-old mother, but the volleyball coach had to tell him none was available. “All of our tickets have been taken for Clarence Thomas and his group,” the coach wrote.

The Thomases have been treated to at least seven University of Nebraska-Lincoln games — five arranged by Sokol — in recent years. The Times first reported on Thomas’ appearances at some of them.

Thomas has never reported any of those tickets on his yearly financial forms. Judiciary disclosure rules require that most gifts worth more than $415 be disclosed. “It’s so obvious,” said Richard Painter, former chief White House ethics lawyer for President George W. Bush. “It all has to be reported.” ProPublica identified more than 60 federal judges who disclosed tickets to sporting events between 2003 and 2019. In 1999, Thomas disclosed private flight and accommodations for the Daytona 500 but hasn’t reported any other sporting events before or since.

In a statement, Osborne confirmed Thomas has “watched a couple of football games” in his suite, which the university had given to him. He said he is “taxed” for the use of the suite but did not answer whether Thomas has ever reimbursed him. The University of Nebraska-Lincoln did not respond to requests for comment.


On Labor Day weekend, 2019, the group sat in former football coach and ex-congressman Tom Osborne’s suite. Osborne told ProPublica he and the justice became friends years ago, when he was in office. Credit: Obtained by ProPublica


The day before the football game, Thomas met with the team. Sokol arranged these visits in emails with the athletic department. Credit: Twitter

On Sunday, the morning after the football game in Nebraska, Sokol flew with Thomas by private jet to Sokol’s Paintbrush Ranch just outside Jackson Hole, Wyoming. The property, valued in the low eight figures, sits in the foothills of Shadow Mountain. A local radio personality said of the estate: “This is the ultimate home and it has the most iconic view of the Tetons I’ve seen. Ever.”

Sokol also owns a waterfront mansion in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, currently worth $20.1 million, where he’s hosted the Thomases as well, according to photos of the visits. The 12,800-square-foot property includes a home theater, elevator, walk-in wine cellar and yacht docking. (In addition, Sokol and Thomas have shared an opulent lodge together while vacationing at Crow’s private lakeside resort, Camp Topridge, in the Adirondacks.)


Sokol’s ranch outside Jackson Hole, Wyoming, which he sold in 2020, is a sprawling, 9,000-square foot estate in the foothills of Shadow Mountain, designed like a lodge. Credit: Realtor Website. Personal information redacted by ProPublica.


The Thomases and others spent several days at the ranch in late summer 2019. Credit: Realtor Website. Personal information redacted by ProPublica.

In Wyoming, the Thomases fished, rafted on the Snake River and sat by a campfire overlooking the Teton Range with the other couples. At one point, the Paolettas serenaded the justice with a song they wrote about him.

Like Thomas, Paoletta did not disclose the trip on his yearly financial filings. At the time, Paoletta was general counsel and the designated ethics official at the Office of Management and Budget. In a statement, Paoletta said he wasn’t required to disclose the trip because he had reimbursed Sokol, but he did not say how much or provide documentation of those payments. “I complied with all ethics laws and regulations,” Paoletta said.


After the football game in Nebraska, Sokol flew the group, including the Thomases, to his opulent ranch overlooking the Teton Range. They rafted, fished and sat by a campfire. At one point, Mark Paoletta and his wife serenaded the justice. Credit: Obtained by ProPublica

Details of the vacation to Nebraska and Wyoming were drawn from photographs, trip planning emails and social media posts, as well as interviews with airport workers, local residents and others familiar with the travel, including river raft guides.

Since 1990, Sokol and his wife have donated more than $1 million to Republican politicians and groups, along with smaller amounts to Democrats. Last October, in New Orleans, Sokol made a direct reference to a pending Supreme Court case while addressing a group of former Horatio Alger scholarship recipients. (Thomas was not in attendance.)

The speech veered into territory that made many of those in attendance uncomfortable and left others appalled, emails and others messages show. Sokol, who has written extensively about American exceptionalism and the virtues of free enterprise, minimized slavery and systemic racism, some felt. He then criticized President Joe Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan, arguing Biden had overstepped the government’s authority, according to a recording of the speech obtained by ProPublica.

“It’s going to get overturned by the Supreme Court,” Sokol predicted, echoing a common legal commentary.

He was right. This summer, the court struck down Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan. Thomas voted in the majority.


Sokol has also hosted the Thomases and others at his mansion in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. The waterfront property, which comes with yacht docking, has a private movie theater, among other luxuries. Credit: Obtained by ProPublica

Deep Sea Fishing in the Caribbean

Nearly every spring, Novelly, a billionaire who made his fortune storing and transporting petroleum, takes his two yachts on a fishing expedition to the Bahamas’ Exuma Islands. Photographs from the trips show porcelain beaches, cerulean waters and fresh mahi-mahi. Friends and family come and go for days at a time.

Three of Novelly’s former yacht workers, including a captain, told ProPublica they recall Thomas coming on board the vessels multiple times in recent years. Novelly’s local chauffeur in the Bahamas said his company once picked Thomas up from the billionaire’s private jet and drove him to the marina where one of the yachts, Le Montrachet, frequently docks.

Le Montrachet, named after the premium French wine, is a 126-foot luxury vessel complete with a full bar, multiple dining areas, a baby grand piano, accommodations for 10 guests and a handful of smaller fishing boats and jet skis. Novelly charges about $60,000 a week to outsiders who want to charter it.


Novelly often takes his luxury yacht, Le Montrachet, on fishing expeditions around the Bahamas’ Exuma Islands. The billionaire’s former yacht workers said Thomas was one of his guests. Credit: CharterWorld Website

Another past guest on Novelly’s yacht is “Alligator” Ron Bergeron, one of the biggest land and roadway developers in Florida. Around 2018, Novelly and Thomas went to Bergeron’s private ranch on the edge of the Everglades — a sprawling, gated estate with centuries-old cypress trees and an 1800s-style saloon on site. He described Novelly as a man who likes to share his success with others. “He’s very generous with all his friends,” Bergeron told ProPublica.

Bergeron said his conversations with Thomas at the ranch were strictly about charity work and not business. “You’re talking about a great man,” Bergeron said, “who gives his time to make a difference for America.”

Since 1999, Novelly’s family and companies have publicly disclosed at least $500,000 to conservative causes and Republican candidates in federal elections. (Before then, he had given to both parties.)

Novelly, who recently stepped down from his CEO roles, ran his business affairs aggressively, ending up on the wrong side of the government in at least two cases. He spends much of his time between St. Louis and Boca Raton, Florida, where he has a 23,000 square-foot palatial estate appraised at $22.2 million. In 2002, Novelly established residency and a holding company in the Virgin Islands. During a hearing with local officials, Novelly described the arrangement there as a “quid pro quo,” meaning the U.S. territory received a boost to the local economy in return for offering substantial tax breaks. The IRS would later call it an “abusive tax avoidance scheme” and pursued Novelly for millions in back taxes and penalties. Novelly denied the characterization and eventually settled with the government for a negotiated amount.

There’s no evidence his friendship with Thomas helped Novelly in one of his most significant disputes. In 2005, the Justice Department sued Novelly’s company, Apex Oil, because its corporate predecessor had contributed to a massive groundwater contamination beneath an Illinois village and then Apex refused to help with the cleanup. Apex argued the spill had occurred before the company went through a bankruptcy years earlier. Several judges ruled against Apex, which eventually appealed to the Supreme Court in 2010. The justices declined to hear the case, and the company had to pay about $150 million to help remove oil from the soil.

It’s not clear how Thomas voted in the case because such votes are not typically public. The vacations ProPublica identified appear to have occurred after the case was resolved.

In 2020, Apex Oil, Sokol and Crow helped fund a documentary defending Thomas as a response to an HBO film that was critical of the justice. Sokol called the HBO movie a “Molotov cocktail into our homes” and a prime example of America’s eroding civility.

The “Most Coveted” Invitation in the World

Thomas’ first billionaire benefactor is likely H. Wayne Huizenga, believed to be the only person in American history to build three separate Fortune 500 companies. One of the three was AutoNation, which Huizenga founded in 1996 before building it into the largest car dealer in the country. Between 1998 and 1999, Huizenga’s holding company spent $500,000 lobbying federal agencies that regulate the automotive industry, according to OpenSecrets data. Over the years, the Huizenga family and companies gave millions to state and federal Republican candidates and once threw a fundraiser for the Florida GOP that helped keep the party afloat for months.

The billionaire was known to regularly lavish gifts and perks on those in his orbit. He routinely took friends on opulent vacations. He paid his employees handsomely and sometimes covered their bills and personal expenses. On a whim, Huizenga once handed box tickets for the opera, which were worth thousands, to his caterer, Bob Leonardi.

“I led the life of a multimillionaire without being one,” Leonardi said.


Huizenga’s employees frequently saw Thomas around the billionaire’s mansion in Fort Lauderdale. Bob Leonardi, middle, was Huizenga’s caterer for years and said his boss liked to share his wealth with friends and employees. Credit: Obtained by ProPublica

For 20 years, Thomas benefited from Huizenga’s attention as well, availing himself of the billionaire’s fleet of aircraft and other luxuries. Huizenga took Thomas to see the Miami Dolphins and Florida Panthers several times between the mid-’90s and mid-2000s, according to interviews and photographs. Huizenga owned both teams at the time.

Executives saw Thomas around Huizenga’s office often. Richard Rochon, the former president of Huizenga Holdings, said Thomas once shadowed the billionaire during meetings. “He just wants to see what I do every day,” Rochon recalled Huizenga saying.

On at least two occasions, Thomas attended Huizenga’s birthday and Christmas parties, which the billionaire held inside his private hangar at the Fort Lauderdale airport. Van Poole, a lobbyist and former chairman of the Florida GOP, recalled riding down the elevator at the nearby Hyatt Pier 66 hotel — which Huizenga also controlled — when the Thomases stepped in with a security detail. The group discussed college sports and then traveled to the party together, Poole said.

Thomas occasionally flew on Huizenga’s helicopters, sometimes taking off from the roof of the corporate headquarters, and at least one of his Gulfstream jets around Florida, according to his former pilots. But the billionaire’s most luxurious planes were a pair of 737 jets he had retrofitted like a lounge, complete with recliners, love seats, mahogany dining and card tables and gourmet food.

At least two times in the mid 2000s, Huizenga sent one of them to pick up Thomas and deliver him to Fort Lauderdale, said John Wener, the flight attendant on board.


Huizenga owned a fleet of aircraft that he kept in a private hangar at the Fort Lauderdale airport. Two of the planes were 737 jets he had retrofitted to look like lounges. He sent those planes to pick up Thomas at least twice and deliver him to South Florida, according to a flight attendant on board. Credit: Lynne Sladky/AP Photo

Wener recalled chatting with the justice about his nomination to the Supreme Court and the tumultuous Senate confirmation hearings after Thomas’ former aide, Anita Hill, accused him of sexual harassment. “He said, ‘Just imagine a job interview and you’re in front of 100 people that hate you,’” Wener recalled Thomas remarking. “‘How would that interview go?’”

In the early 2000s, Huizenga gave Thomas something that was priceless at the time: a standing invitation to his exclusive, members-only golf club, the Floridian. Designed by golf legend Gary Player, the course was lined with cottages for Huizenga’s friends, a yacht marina for them to dock and a helipad if they wanted to fly in. One family friend told the Huizenga family biographer that the Floridian was “the most coveted private golf invitation in the world.” Those who worked and played there said the membership rolls were a Rolodex of the rich, famous and powerful: From Michael Douglas and Rush Limbaugh to Michael Bloomberg and former Vice President Dan Quayle. Donald Trump once asked to be a member but Huizenga spurned him, according to three of Huizenga’s former employees.

All 200-plus members were “honorary” and didn’t pay dues — Huizenga covered everything. “It was a little slice of heaven, a magical place,” former media personality Matt Lauer told the biographer. “You drove through the gates and it was this fairytale land that he had created.”


One of the crown jewels of Huizenga’s business empire was the Floridian golf and yacht club. When Huizenga owned the property, he gave honorary invitations to some 200 close friends without charging them an initiation fee or dues. Thomas was seen by several employees at the club over the years. Credit: Floridian Website

It’s unclear if Thomas was a member or Huizenga’s frequent guest with similar privileges. The billionaire’s former personal photographer and two former golf pros at the club recalled seeing Thomas there multiple times over the years. One of Huizenga’s helicopter pilots said he had picked the justice up from the property. And a fifth employee, a former waitress and concierge, said she once served Thomas and Huizenga, who were wearing golf attire, as they dined alone in the enormous waterfront clubhouse for lunch. “Have you met a Supreme Court justice?” Huizenga asked the waitress before she took their order. “This is Clarence Thomas.”

Today, the Floridian, which the Huizenga family sold in 2010 before it underwent renovations, has a $150,000 initiation fee.

Paying for Access to the Supreme Court Chambers

Thomas first met Huizenga at a formal gala in Washington, D.C., in 1992, when they were both inducted into the Horatio Alger Association. Henry Kissinger and Maya Angelou were among the other honorees that year. The organization, named after the 19th-century novelist who popularized rags-to-riches folklore, gives millions in college scholarships each year and also brings together some of the country’s wealthiest, self-made business tycoons for opulent events. (In real life, Alger was a minister on Cape Cod who resigned from his parish after he was credibly accused of molesting boys.)

“We were proud to honor Justice Thomas more than 30 years ago,” an association spokesperson said in a statement, “and remain grateful for his continued involvement in our organization.” She said Thomas spends countless hours mentoring scholarship recipients.


Thomas met Huizenga in 1992 at their induction ceremony in Washington, D.C. They became close friends for decades afterward and the billionaire, who died in 2018, regularly hosted Thomas in Florida. Thomas acknowledged the pair occasionally talked about business but said their relationship was never transactional. Credit: Obtained by ProPublica

Thomas appears to have met Huizenga, Sokol, Novelly and Bergeron through the organization. Several of Thomas’ trips to Florida in the 2000s appear to have been connected with the association. In that time period, he joined Huizenga at Horatio Alger scholarship ceremonies in South Florida, travel that the justice disclosed in several of his yearly financial filings.

However, he never identified Huizenga in any of his disclosures. The association spokesperson confirmed to ProPublica that the billionaire hosted those events “and covered all costs involved.”

Experts said that means Thomas’ disclosures would be, at a minimum, incomplete and misleading because the rules require federal judges to identify the source of the gifts they receive. “Source means the person or entity that paid for it,” said Kathleen Clark, a legal ethics authority at Washington University in St. Louis.

Belonging to the association has had its privileges. As part of a board meeting, the Thomases once went on a lavish trip to Jamaica, where they were hosted by a wealthy donor who owned a luxury hotel atop a former sugar plantation. Johnny Cash performed. Horatio Alger Association membership itself is worth at least $200,000, according to the organization’s meeting minutes in 2007, a sum that those who nominate a new member are responsible for raising in that person’s honor. The association spokesperson said there was no requirement to raise money for new members back when Thomas was inducted.

Thomas has likely helped the group earn many times that figure since then. Every year, the justice hosts an event for members inside the Supreme Court’s Great Hall. The Times previously reported that the event afforded the Horatio Alger Association unusual access to the court.


Membership into the Horatio Alger Association itself comes with a price tag. The association requires members to donate at least $200,000 on behalf of new inductees. A spokesperson said that when Thomas was inducted there wasn’t a donation requirement. Credit: Obtained by ProPublica. Highlights by ProPublica

ProPublica examined boxes of the association’s historical archives, including financial records that show the group has required donations of at least $1,500 — $7,500 for nonmembers — to attend the Supreme Court event. In 2004, those who donated $100,000 for a table at the main ceremony got 10 seats inside the Supreme Court. In the judiciary’s code of conduct — which is general guidance that does not apply to Supreme Court justices, though they say they consult it — there is explicit language advising federal judges against using their position to fundraise for outside organizations.


Financial records from the Horatio Alger Association archives show the group has been fundraising off of an event hosted by Thomas inside the Supreme Court building. Credit: Obtained by ProPublica. Highlights by ProPublica.

But that’s what Thomas has done, said Virginia Canter, a former government ethics lawyer who served in administrations of both parties and reviewed the association’s financial records at ProPublica’s request.

“To use the Supreme Court to fundraise for somebody’s charity is, to me, an abuse of office,” she said. Canter acknowledged the organization may do good work, but that’s besides the point, she said, because wealthy donors aren’t supposed to be able to pay thousands of dollars to visit a justice inside the courthouse walls.

“It’s pay to play,” Canter added, “isn’t it?”

Do you have any tips on the Supreme Court? Brett Murphy can be reached by email at [email protected] and by Signal or WhatsApp at 508-523-5195. Justin Elliott can be reached by email at [email protected] or by Signal or WhatsApp at 774-826-6240. Josh Kaplan can be reached by email at [email protected] and by Signal or WhatsApp at 734-834-9383.

Josh Kaplan and Justin Elliott contributed reporting.

Brett Murphy
Brett Murphy is a reporter on ProPublica’s national desk. His work uncovering a new junk science known as 911 call analysis won a George Polk Award, among other honors.
[email protected]

Alex Mierjeski
Alex is a research reporter at ProPublica.
[email protected]
@Amierjeski

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Clarence Thomas Had a Child in Private School. Harlan Crow Paid the Tuition. Crow paid for private school for a relative Thomas said he was raising “as a son.” “This is way outside the norm,” said a former White House ethics lawyer.
by Joshua Kaplan, Justin Elliott and Alex Mierjeski
Propublica
May 4, 6 a.m. EDT


Photo illustration by Lisa Larson-Walker/ProPublica. Source images: Chris Goodney/Bloomberg via Getty Images, piemags/DCM/Alamy Stock Photo, Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images.

Update, May 4, 2023: This story has been updated to reflect that Mark Paoletta, a longtime friend of Clarence Thomas who has also served as Ginni Thomas’ lawyer, acknowledged Harlan Crow’s tuition payments.

In 2008, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas decided to send his teenage grandnephew to Hidden Lake Academy, a private boarding school in the foothills of northern Georgia. The boy, Mark Martin, was far from home. For the previous decade, he had lived with the justice and his wife in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. Thomas had taken legal custody of Martin when he was 6 years old and had recently told an interviewer he was “raising him as a son.”

Tuition at the boarding school ran more than $6,000 a month. But Thomas did not cover the bill. A bank statement for the school from July 2009, buried in unrelated court filings, shows the source of Martin’s tuition payment for that month: the company of billionaire real estate magnate Harlan Crow.

The payments extended beyond that month, according to Christopher Grimwood, a former administrator at the school. Crow paid Martin’s tuition the entire time he was a student there, which was about a year, Grimwood told ProPublica.

“Harlan picked up the tab,” said Grimwood, who got to know Crow and the Thomases and had access to school financial information through his work as an administrator.

Before and after his time at Hidden Lake, Martin attended a second boarding school, Randolph-Macon Academy in Virginia. “Harlan said he was paying for the tuition at Randolph-Macon Academy as well,” Grimwood said, recalling a conversation he had with Crow during a visit to the billionaire’s Adirondacks estate.

ProPublica interviewed Martin, his former classmates and former staff at both schools. The exact total Crow paid for Martin’s education over the years remains unclear. If he paid for all four years at the two schools, the price tag could have exceeded $150,000, according to public records of tuition rates at the schools.

Thomas did not report the tuition payments from Crow on his annual financial disclosures. Several years earlier, Thomas disclosed a gift of $5,000 for Martin’s education from another friend. It is not clear why he reported that payment but not Crow’s.

The tuition payments add to the picture of how the Republican megadonor has helped fund the lives of Thomas and his family.

“You can’t be having secret financial arrangements,” said Mark W. Bennett, a retired federal judge appointed by President Bill Clinton. Bennett said he was friendly with Thomas and declined to comment for the record about the specifics of Thomas’ actions. But he said that when he was on the bench, he wouldn’t let his lawyer friends buy him lunch.


A July 2009 bank statement for Hidden Lake Academy shows a wire from Crow Holdings LLC. Credit: Excerpt from court records. Highlights added by ProPublica.

Thomas did not respond to questions. In response to previous ProPublica reporting on gifts of luxury travel, he said that the Crows “are among our dearest friends” and that he understood he didn’t have to disclose the trips.

ProPublica sent Crow a detailed list of questions and his office responded with a statement that did not dispute the facts presented in this story.

“Harlan Crow has long been passionate about the importance of quality education and giving back to those less fortunate, especially at-risk youth,” the statement said. “It’s disappointing that those with partisan political interests would try to turn helping at-risk youth with tuition assistance into something nefarious or political.” The statement added that Crow and his wife have “supported many young Americans” at a “variety of schools, including his alma mater.” Crow went to Randolph-Macon Academy.

Crow did not address a question about how much he paid in total for Martin’s tuition. Asked if Thomas had requested the support for either school, Crow’s office responded, “No.”

Last month, ProPublica reported that Thomas accepted luxury travel from Crow virtually every year for decades, including international superyacht cruises and private jet flights around the world. Crow also paid money to Thomas and his relatives in an undisclosed real estate deal, ProPublica found. After he purchased the house where Thomas’ mother lives, Crow poured tens of thousands of dollars into improving the property. And roughly 15 years ago, Crow donated much of the budget of a political group founded by Thomas’ wife, which paid her a $120,000 salary.

“This is way outside the norm. This is way in excess of anything I’ve seen,” said Richard Painter, former chief White House ethics lawyer for President George W. Bush, referring to the cascade of gifts over the years.

Painter said that when he was at the White House, an official who’d taken what Thomas had would have been fired: “This amount of undisclosed gifts? You’d want to get them out of the government.”

A federal law passed after Watergate requires justices and other officials to publicly report most gifts. Ethics law experts told ProPublica they believed Thomas was required by law to disclose the tuition payments because they appear to be a gift to him.

Justices also must report many gifts to their spouses and dependent children. The law’s definition of dependent child is narrow, however, and likely would not apply to Martin since Thomas was his legal guardian, not his parent. The best case for not disclosing Crow’s tuition payments would be to argue the gifts were to Martin, not Thomas, experts said.

But that argument was far-fetched, experts said, because minor children rarely pay their own tuition. Typically, the legal guardian is responsible for the child’s education.

“The most reasonable interpretation of the statute is that this was a gift to Thomas and thus had to be reported. It’s common sense,” said Kathleen Clark, an ethics law expert at Washington University in St. Louis. “It’s all to the financial benefit of Clarence Thomas.”

Martin, now in his 30s, told ProPublica he was not aware that Crow paid his tuition. But he defended Thomas and Crow, saying he believed there was no ulterior motive behind the real estate magnate’s largesse over the decades. “I think his intentions behind everything is just a friend and just a good person,” Martin said.

[After this story was published, Mark Paoletta, a longtime friend of Clarence Thomas who has also served as Ginni Thomas’ lawyer, released a statement. Paoletta confirmed that Crow paid for Martin’s tuition at both Randolph-Macon Academy and Hidden Lake, saying Crow paid for one year at each. He did not give a total amount but, based on the tuition rates at the time, the two years would amount to roughly $100,000.

Paoletta said that Thomas did not have to report the payments because Martin was not his “dependent child” as defined in the disclosure law. He criticized ProPublica for reporting on this and said “the Thomases and the Crows are kind, generous, and loving people who tried to help this young man.”]

Crow has long been an influential figure in pro-business conservative politics. He has given millions to efforts to move the law and the judiciary to the right and serves on the boards of think tanks that publish scholarship advancing conservative legal theories.

Crow has denied trying to influence the justice but has said he extended hospitality to him just as he has to other dear friends. From the start, their relationship has intertwined expensive gifts and conservative politics. In a recent interview with The Dallas Morning News, Crow recounted how he first met Thomas. In 1996, the justice was scheduled to give a speech in Dallas for an anti-regulation think tank. Crow offered to fly him there on his private jet. “During that flight, we found out we were kind of simpatico,” the billionaire said.

The following year, the Thomases began to discuss taking custody of Martin. His father, Thomas’ nephew, had been imprisoned in connection with a drug case. Thomas has written that Martin’s situation held deep resonance for him because his own father was absent and his grandparents had taken him in “under very similar circumstances.”

Thomas had an adult son from a previous marriage, but he and wife, Ginni, didn’t have children of their own. They pitched Martin’s parents on taking the boy in.

“Thomas explained that the boy would have the best of everything — his own room, a private school education, lots of extracurricular activities,” journalists Kevin Merida and Michael Fletcher reported in their biography of Thomas.

Thomas gained legal custody of Martin and became his legal guardian around January 1998, according to court records.

Martin, who had been living in Georgia with his mother and siblings, moved to Virginia, where he lived with the justice from the ages of 6 to 19, he said.

Living with the Thomases came with an unusual perk: lavish travel with Crow and his family. Martin told ProPublica that he and Thomas vacationed with the Crows “at least once a year” throughout his childhood.

That included visits to Camp Topridge, Crow’s private resort in the Adirondacks, and two cruises on Crow’s superyacht, Martin said. On a trip in the Caribbean, Martin recalled riding jet skis off the side of the billionaire’s yacht.

Roughly 20 years ago, Martin, Thomas and the Crows went on a cruise on the yacht in Russia and the Baltics, according to Martin and two other people familiar with the trip. The group toured St. Petersburg in a rented helicopter and visited the Yusupov Palace, the site of Rasputin’s murder, said one of the people. They were joined by Chris DeMuth, then the president of the conservative think tank the American Enterprise Institute. (Thomas’ trips with Crow to the Baltics and the Caribbean have not previously been reported.)

Thomas reconfigured his life to balance the demands of raising a child with serving on the high court. He began going to the Supreme Court before 6 a.m. so he could leave in time to pick Martin up after class and help him with his homework. By 2001, the justice had moved Martin to private school out of frustration with the Fairfax County public school system’s lax schedule, The American Lawyer magazine reported.

For high school, Thomas sent Martin to Randolph-Macon Academy, a military boarding school 75 miles west of Washington, D.C., where he was in the class of 2010. The school, which sits on a 135-acre campus in the Shenandoah Valley, charged between $25,000 to $30,000 a year. Martin played football and basketball, and the justice sometimes visited for games.

Randolph-Macon was also Crow’s alma mater. Thomas and Crow visited the campus in April 2007 for the dedication of an imposing bronze sculpture of the Air Force Honor Guard, according to the school magazine. Crow donated the piece to Randolph-Macon, where it is a short walk from Crow Hall, a classroom building named after the Dallas billionaire’s family.


Harlan Crow and Clarence Thomas attended the 2007 dedication of a statue gifted by Crow to Randolph-Macon Academy. Credit: The Sabre Magazine

Martin sometimes chafed at the strictures of military school, according to people at Randolph-Macon at the time, and he spent his junior year at Hidden Lake Academy, a therapeutic boarding school in Georgia. Hidden Lake boasted one teacher for every 10 students and activities ranging from horseback riding to canoeing. Those services came at an added cost. At the time, a year of tuition was roughly $73,000, plus fees.

The July 2009 bank statement from Hidden Lake was filed in a bankruptcy case for the school, which later went under. The document shows that Crow Holdings LLC wired $6,200 to the school that month, the exact cost of the month’s tuition. The wire is marked “Mark Martin” in the ledger.

Crow’s office said in its statement that Crow’s funding of students’ tuition has “always been paid solely from personal funds, sometimes held at and paid through the family business.”

Grimwood, the administrator at Hidden Lake, told ProPublica that Crow wired the school money once a month to pay Martin’s tuition fees. Grimwood had multiple roles on the campus, including overseeing an affiliated wilderness program. He said he was speaking about the payments because he felt the public should know about outside financial support for Supreme Court justices. Martin returned to Randolph-Macon his senior year.

Thomas has long been one of the less wealthy members of the Supreme Court. Still, when Martin was in high school, he and Ginni Thomas had income that put them comfortably in the top echelon of Americans.

In 2006 for example, the Thomases brought in more than $500,000 in income. The following year, they made more than $850,000 from Clarence Thomas’ salary from the court, Ginni Thomas’ pay from the Heritage Foundation and book payments for the justice’s memoir.

It appears that at some point in Martin’s childhood, Thomas was paying for private school himself. Martin told ProPublica that Thomas sold his Corvette — “his most prized car” — to pay for a year of tuition, although he didn’t remember when that occurred.

In 2002, a friend of Thomas’ from the RV community who owned a Florida pest control company, Earl Dixon, offered Thomas $5,000 to help defray the costs of Martin’s education. Thomas’ disclosure of that earlier gift, several experts said, could be viewed as evidence that the justice himself understood he was required to report tuition aid from friends.

“At first, Thomas was worried about the propriety of the donation,” Thomas biographers Merida and Fletcher recounted. “He agreed to accept it if the contribution was deposited directly into a special trust for Mark.” In his annual filing, Thomas reported the money as an “education gift to Mark Martin.”


Thomas disclosed an education gift to Martin from a friend in his 2002 disclosure filing. Credit: Free Law Project

Do you have any tips on the Supreme Court or the judiciary? Josh Kaplan can be reached by email at [email protected] and by Signal or WhatsApp at 734-834-9383. Justin Elliott can be reached by email at [email protected] or by Signal or WhatsApp at 774-826-6240.

Gabriel Sandoval contributed research.

Josh Kaplan is a reporter at ProPublica.

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A “Delicate Matter”: Clarence Thomas’ Private Complaints About Money Sparked Fears He Would Resign
by Justin Elliott, Joshua Kaplan, Alex Mierjeski and Brett Murphy
Dec. 18, 6 a.m. EST
https://www.propublica.org/article/clar ... %20friends.

Interviews and newly unearthed documents reveal that Thomas, facing financial strain, privately pushed for a higher salary and to allow Supreme Court justices to take speaking fees.
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Series:Friends of the Court: SCOTUS Justices’ Beneficial Relationships With Billionaire Donors
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In early January 2000, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas was at a five-star beach resort in Sea Island, Georgia, hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt.

After almost a decade on the court, Thomas had grown frustrated with his financial situation, according to friends. He had recently started raising his young grandnephew, and Thomas’ wife was soliciting advice on how to handle the new expenses. The month before, the justice had borrowed $267,000 from a friend to buy a high-end RV.

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At the resort, Thomas gave a speech at an off-the-record conservative conference. He found himself seated next to a Republican member of Congress on the flight home. The two men talked, and the lawmaker left the conversation worried that Thomas might resign.

Congress should give Supreme Court justices a pay raise, Thomas told him. If lawmakers didn’t act, “one or more justices will leave soon” — maybe in the next year.

At the time, Thomas’ salary was $173,600, equivalent to over $300,000 today. But he was one of the least wealthy members of the court, and on multiple occasions in that period, he pushed for ways to make more money. In other private conversations, Thomas repeatedly talked about removing a ban on justices giving paid speeches.

Thomas’ efforts were described in records from the time obtained by ProPublica, including a confidential memo to Chief Justice William Rehnquist from a top judiciary official seeking guidance on what he termed a “delicate matter.”

The documents, as well as interviews, offer insight into how Thomas was talking about his finances in a crucial period in his tenure, just as he was developing his relationships with a set of wealthy benefactors.

Congress never lifted the ban on speaking fees or gave the justices a major raise. But in the years that followed, as ProPublica has reported, Thomas accepted a stream of gifts from friends and acquaintances that appears to be unparalleled in the modern history of the Supreme Court. Some defrayed living expenses large and small — private school tuition, vehicle batteries, tires. Other gifts from a coterie of ultrarich men supplemented his lifestyle, such as free international vacations on the private jet and superyacht of Dallas real estate billionaire Harlan Crow.

Precisely what led so many people to offer Thomas money and other gifts remains an open question. There’s no evidence the justice ever raised the specter of resigning with Crow or his other wealthy benefactors.

George Priest, a Yale Law School professor who has vacationed with Thomas and Crow, told ProPublica he believes Crow’s generosity was not intended to influence Thomas’ views but rather to make his life more comfortable. “He views Thomas as a Supreme Court justice as having a limited salary,” Priest said. “So he provides benefits for him.”

Thomas and Crow didn’t respond to questions for this story. Crow, a major Republican donor, has not had cases at the Supreme Court since Thomas joined it and has previously said Thomas is a dear friend. David Sokol, a conservative financier who has taken Thomas on vacation on a private jet, said in a statement that he and Thomas had never discussed the justice’s finances or when he might retire.

Thomas’ comments in 2000 were to Florida Rep. Cliff Stearns, a vocal conservative who’d been in Congress for 11 years and occasionally socialized with the justice. They set off a flurry of activity across the judiciary and Capitol Hill. “His importance as a conservative was paramount,” Stearns said in a recent interview. “We wanted to make sure he felt comfortable in his job and he was being paid properly.”

There’s an often-criticized dynamic surrounding most important jobs in the federal government: The posts pay far less than comparable jobs in the private sector, but officials can cash in once they leave. Ex-regulators sell advice to the regulated. Generals retire to join military contractors. Former senators get jobs lobbying Congress.

But there is no revolving-door payday waiting on the other side of a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court. Justices generally stay on the bench past their 80th birthday, if not until death. In 2000, justices were paid more than cabinet secretaries or members of Congress, and far more than the average American. Still, judges’ salaries were not keeping pace with inflation, a source of ire throughout the federal judiciary. Young associates at top law firms made more than Supreme Court justices, while partners at the firms could earn millions a year.

Table with 2 columns and 4 rows.
Job Salaries in 2022
Median American worker $60,070
Member of Congress $174,000
Associate Supreme Court Justice $274,200
Partner at highest-paying law firm $7,294,000
Note: Median American figure is for full-time, year-round workers. Law partner figure is for the highest-paying of the 100 largest firms. (Sources: U.S. Census Current Population Survey, The American Lawyer)
Some of Thomas’ colleagues were extremely wealthy — Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was married to a high-paid tax lawyer and Justice Stephen Breyer to the daughter of a wealthy British lord. Thomas did not come from money. When he was appointed to the court in 1991, he was 43 years old and had spent almost all his adult life working for the government. At the time, he still had student loans from law school, Thomas has said.

The full details of Thomas’ finances over the years remain unclear. He made at least two big purchases around the early ’90s: a Corvette and a house in the Virginia suburbs on 5 acres of land. When Thomas and his wife, Ginni, bought the home for $522,000 a year after he joined the court, they borrowed all but $8,000, less than 2% of the purchase price, property records show.

Public records suggest a degree of financial strain. Throughout the first decade of his tenure, the couple regularly borrowed more money, including a $100,000 credit line on their house and a consumer loan of up to $50,000. Around January 1998, Thomas’ life changed when he took in his 6-year-old grandnephew, becoming his legal guardian and raising him as a son. The Thomases sent the child to a series of private schools.

In early January 2000, Thomas took the trip to the Georgia beach resort. Thomas was there to deliver a keynote speech at Awakening, a “conservative thought weekend” featuring golf, shooting lessons and aromatherapy along with panel discussions with businessmen and elected officials. (A founder and organizer of the annual event, Ernest Taylor, told ProPublica that Thomas’ trip was paid for by the organization. Thomas reported 11 free trips that year on his annual financial disclosure, mostly to colleges and universities, but did not disclose attending the conservative conference, an apparent violation of federal disclosure law.)


Thomas spoke at the Awakening conference in 2000. Credit:Screenshot by ProPublica of Awakening brochure
On a commercial flight back from Awakening, Thomas brought up the prospect of justices resigning to Stearns, the Republican lawmaker. Worried, Stearns wrote a letter to Thomas after the flight promising “to look into a bill to raise the salaries of members of The Supreme Court.”

“As we agreed, it is worth a lot to Americans to have the constitution properly interpreted,” Stearns wrote. “We must have the proper incentives here, too.”

Stearns’ office soon sought help from a lobbying firm working on the issue, and he delivered a speech on the House floor about judges’ salaries getting eroded by inflation. Thomas’ warning about resignations was relayed at a meeting of the heads of several judges’ associations. L. Ralph Mecham, then the judiciary’s top administrative official, fired off the memo describing Thomas’ complaints to Rehnquist, his boss.

“I understand that Justice Thomas clearly told him that in his view departures would occur within the next year or so,” Mecham wrote of Thomas’ conversation with Stearns. Mecham worried that “from a tactical point of view,” congressional Democrats might oppose a raise if they sensed “the apparent purpose is to keep Justices [Antonin] Scalia and Thomas on the Court.” (Scalia had nine children and was also one of the less wealthy justices. Scalia, Mecham and Rehnquist have since died.)

It’s not clear if Rehnquist ever responded. Several months later, Rehnquist focused his annual year-end report on what he called “the most pressing issue facing the Judiciary: the need to increase judicial salaries.”


Stearns sent a letter to Thomas after their conversation about pay and possible resignations at the Supreme Court. Credit:George Washington University Special Collections Research Center
Several people close to Thomas told ProPublica they believed that it was implausible the justice would ever retire early, and that he may have exaggerated his concerns to bolster the case for a raise. But around 2000, chatter that Thomas was dissatisfied about money circulated through conservative legal circles and on Capitol Hill, according to interviews with prominent attorneys, former members of Congress and Thomas’ friends. “It was clear he was unhappy with his financial situation and his salary,” one friend said.

Former Sen. Trent Lott, then the Republican Senate majority leader, recalled in a recent interview that there were serious concerns at the time that Thomas or other justices would leave.

The public received hardly a hint that such conversations about Thomas were unfolding in Washington. Thomas did once allude to government salaries, in a 2001 speech praising the value of public service. “The job is not worth doing for what they pay. It’s not worth doing for the grief,” he said. “But it is worth doing for the principle.”


Thomas delivered a speech in 2001 on the value of public service. Credit:Screenshot by ProPublica via C-SPAN
Around that time, Thomas was also pushing to allow justices to make paid speeches — a source of income that had been banned in the 1980s. On several occasions, Thomas discussed lifting the ban with appellate Judge David Hansen, who chaired the judiciary’s committee responsible for lobbying Congress on issues like pay, according to Mecham’s memo.

At Sen. Mitch McConnell’s request, a provision removing the ban for judges was quietly inserted into a spending bill in mid-2000. Why McConnell made the proposal became a subject of scrutiny in the legal press. After the Legal Times reported the measure had been dubbed the “Keep Scalia on the Court” bill, Scalia responded that the “honorarium ban makes no difference to me” and denied that he would ever leave the court for financial reasons. (The ban was never lifted. McConnell did not respond to a request for comment.)

During his second decade on the court, Thomas’ financial situation appears to have markedly improved. In 2003, he received the first payments of a $1.5 million advance for his memoir, a record-breaking sum for justices at the time. Ginni Thomas, who had been a congressional staffer, was by then working at the Heritage Foundation and was paid a salary in the low six figures.

Thomas also received dozens of expensive gifts throughout the 2000s, sometimes coming from people he’d met only shortly before. Thomas met Earl Dixon, the owner of a Florida pest control company, while getting his RV serviced outside Tampa in 2001, according to the Thomas biography “Supreme Discomfort.” The next year, Dixon gave Thomas $5,000 to put toward his grandnephew’s tuition. Thomas reported the payment in his annual disclosure filing.


The Judiciary Has Policed Itself for Decades. It Doesn’t Work.
Larger gifts went undisclosed. Crow paid for two years of private high school, which tuition rates indicate would’ve cost roughly $100,000. In 2008, another wealthy friend forgave “a substantial amount, or even all” of the principal on the loan Thomas had used to buy the quarter-million dollar RV, according to a recent Senate inquiry prompted by The New York Times’ reporting. Much of the Thomases’ leisure time was also paid for by a small set of billionaire businessmen, who brought the justice and his family on free vacations around the world. (Thomas has said he did not need to disclose the gifts of travel and his lawyer has disputed the Senate findings about the RV.)

By 2019, the justices’ pay hadn’t changed beyond keeping up with inflation. But Thomas’ views had apparently transformed from two decades before. That June, during a public appearance, Thomas was asked about salaries at the court. “Oh goodness, I think it’s plenty,” Thomas responded. “My wife and I are doing fine. We don’t live extravagantly, but we are fine.”

A few weeks later, Thomas boarded Crow’s private jet to head to Indonesia. He and his wife were off on vacation, an island cruise on Crow’s 162-foot yacht.